The invention herein is primarily concerned with the class of articles that are known as store fixtures but particularly is concerned with an assembly that is used for merchandizing clothing. No limitation is intended by this statement.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,685,662 there is disclosed a merchandizing system primarily for clothing in which a pair of spaced brackets is mounted to the conventional slotted standards that can be secured to a wall; each has an adapter of special construction secured to its front end; and there is a hang rail of special construction extending between the adapters and supported by the brackets. It is intended that clothing items on hangers offered for sale or on display will be engaged onto the hang rail and be supported thereby to enable these items to be hung in orderly fashion while being capable of sliding movement along the rail to enable their viewing.
This type of structure is especially useful when the rail itself is to support the clothing items directly, but has less utility when it is desired to have a plurality of items arranged along a support, for example a short length of tubing, which extends forwardly from the rail such as in a plane normal thereto. Thus, in the process of examining articles of clothing that are mounted on a hang rail, the customer may wish to see a series of articles from different areas but wants to examine them closely in one place. The articles are gathered together and there may be short cantilever mounted rods secured to the wall and upon which the salesperson will hang the gathered articles.
It would be convenient to have the short cantilever mounted rods hung from the main hang rail and for this purpose it has been proposed to utilize rectangular cross section hang rods or horizontally disposed bars to mount the cantilever rods. In such cases, the cantilever rod has an inverted U-shaped member at its secured end which engages closely over the rectangular hang rail or bar. One such structure is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,150,753 wherein there is shown a merchandise display fixture based upon a pair of spaced brackets which are secured to a wall by means of slotted vertical standards or the like. Each bracket has a right angle bent portion at its distal end and a rearwardly extending reversely turned wing integral with the right angle bent portion. Aligned vertical slots in the main part of the bracket and the reversely turned wing receive the bar which is installed in a downward movement and the right angle bent portion has a cam button which engages the front face of the bar when it is installed so that the bar is frictionally engaged in the slots. The pressure of the cam button is intended to prevent inadvertent removal of the bar, lengthwise sliding during use and the notches are expected to keep the bar from rotating during use.
The invention herein is directed to a structure which obviates some of the disadvantages of the structure of said U.S. Pat. No. 4,150,753. The structures which are illustrated and described in said last-mentioned patent are complex in that they require complicated tools and dies for manufacture; they are wasteful of material because they require a bracket made from a metal member whose length is at least equal to the length of the bracket from rear to front plus the length of the right angle bent portion on the front end plus the length of the reverse turned wing; they are further wasteful of material in that the metal cut from the bracket to form the slots is all discarded.
The invention herein is directed to a structure which is simple, economical to manufacture and is highly effective to achieve the ends of providing for the support of a hang rail which is rectangular in cross section and which will not inadvertently move or twist when used for supporting merchandise, especially when said merchandise is carried by cantilever mounted rods mounted on the hang rail.